70 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



the depression of the South Pole in the expression of &quot;in- 

 teriora Ausfcri,&quot; because the southern stars are not seen 

 in our hemisphere. 8 &quot; Again, what concerns the generation 

 of living creatures, he says, &quot;Annon sicut lac mulsisti me, 

 et sicut caseum coagulasti me?&quot; 90 and touching mineral 

 subjects, &quot;Habet argentum venarum suarum principia, et 

 auro locus est, in quo conflatur; ferrum de terra tollitur, 

 et lapsis solutus calore in aes vertitur,&quot; 91 and so forward 

 in the same chapter. 



Nor did the dispensation of God vary in the times after 

 our Saviour, who himself first showed his power to subdue 

 ignorance, by conferring with the priests and doctors of the 

 law, before he showed his power to subdue nature by mira 

 cles. And the coming of the Holy Spirit was chiefly ex 

 pressed in the gift of tongues, which are but the conveyance 

 of knowledge. 



So in the election of those instruments it pleased God 

 to use for planting the faith, though at first he employed 

 persons altogether unlearned, otherwise than by inspiration, 

 the more evidently to declare his immediate working, and to 

 humble all human wisdom or knowledge, yet in the next 

 succession he sent out his divine truth into the world, 

 attended with other parts of learning as with servants or 

 handmaids; thus St. Paul, who was the only learned among 

 the apostles, had his pen most employed in the writings of 

 the New Testament. 



Again, we find that many of the ancient bishops and 

 fathers of the Church were well versed in all the learning 

 of the heathens, insomuch that the edict of the Emperor 

 Julian prohibiting Christians the schools and exercises, was 

 accounted a more pernicious engine against the faith than 

 all the sanguinary persecution of his predecessors. 92 Neither 



89 It is not true that all the southern stars are invisible in our hemisphere. 

 The text applies only to those whose southern declination is greater than the 

 elevation of the equator over their part of the horizon, or, which is the same 

 thing, than the complement of the place s latitude. Ed. 



w x. 10. 91 xxviii. 1. 



w Epist. ad Jamblic. Gibbon, vol ii. c. 23. 



